Human Rights Watch – World Report 2017

The rise of populist leaders poses a dangerous threat to basic rights protections while encouraging abuse by autocrats around the world, notes the Human Rights Watch World Report 2017. Strongman leaders in Russia, Turkey, the Philippines, and China have substituted their own authority, rather than accountable government and the rule of law, as a guarantor of prosperity and security. These trends, bolstered by propaganda operations that denigrate legal standards and disdain factual analysis, directly challenge the laws and institutions that promote dignity, tolerance, and equality.

In the 27th edition of the World Report, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide, stressing that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights not as an essential check on official power but as an impediment to the majority will.

World Report 2017 reflects investigative work that Human Rights Watch staff undertook in 2016, usually in close partnership with human rights activists in the country in focus. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights not as an essential check on official power but as an impediment to the majority will.

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